Skip to content

PHOTOS: Mission house buried by landslide after private road collapses

City of Mission declares local state of emergency after access to 3 homes cut off

A landslide slammed into a two-storey house in Mission’s Silverdale community yesterday afternoon (Dec. 1), piling dirt and logs up to its roof and cutting off access to three other homes.

Fire Chief Mark Goddard said the slide occurred at approximately noon and the house is “severely damaged,” but was unable to elaborate on the extent without a damage assessment.

“Luckily no one was home,” Goddard said, adding Mission Fire Rescue Service rescued two dogs.

“Unfortunately for those folks, it’s probably going to be a long, long haul to have their house rebuilt.”

The entrance to the private asphalt road is now blocked by barricades; the road has visibly collapsed with the slide.

Logs have crashed through windows, and Goddard said that a significant amount of mud has entered the home, rendering it unlivable.

The City of Mission declared a local state of emergency and evacuation order for the four houses along the private road, located just off the 31100 Block at Silverhill Avenue, said Chief Administrative Officer Mike Younie.

“We’re waiting for a geotechnical engineer to come out and assess the damage, and if there’s risk of additional damage, ” Younie said.

“Yesterday was a busy day.”

The City of Mission was hit by several slides on the last day of the 3rd atmospheric river event in B.C.

Wren Street had a long section of road close to Tyler Street collapse and will require extensive repairs; another mudslide caused the entire water system supplying two mobile home parks to be turned offline, according to Younie.

Goddard said the streets will remain closed until a geotechnical engineer is deployed to make an assessment on the slope stability.

“Our hope is that this is the last kind of atmospheric river for a while,” he said.

Younie said a lot of Mission’s rural roads were built before geotechnical assessments were required.

“They’re old logging roads, basically, a lot of them are not built like they would be if we were building new roads today,” he said. “It’s not unexpected that we’re seeing problems after a storm of this magnitude.”

RELATED: Search and Rescue: Biggest threats in Mission, Hatzic Valley are landslides


@portmoodypigeon
patrick.penner@missioncityrecord.com

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.